“The best of recent memorials — Maya Lin’s perfect Vietnam War memorial — transcends the bitter divisions over that terrible sacrifice of lives, and unites us all in common sorrow, reverence, and gratitude for these honored dead. Yet even that work of art and memory had to be cluttered at the edges with some needless statuary and a little flagpole or two.”

This tells me all I need to know about Greenberg’s taste and politics. Not one veteran of any war—never mind Vietnam, not one active military serviceran served on the selection panel for the Vietnam Memorial. The black tombstone now half-buried in the mall, listing those it was meant to memorialize in chronological death-order, minus military service identity and honors was the Left’s meaning-packed exclamation point after a war it, not those it memorializes, lost. Thank God and less sophisticated voices than Greenberg’s that the statues were added to remind us of the heroism and patriotism of those whose deaths ultimately led to the fall of another wall.

Paul Greenberg was writing anti-Clinton columns long before most of us knew who Bill Clinton was, much less what he was really like. I believe he is the one who invented the “Slick Willie” nickname for him. He was a newspaper man in Arkansas when CLinton was governor.